Majesty In The Moonlight

Art Week

'Dancing in the Moonlight: Nocturnes By Charles Yoder' At Mattatuck

Charles Yoder's world is dark but never sad. Yoder, a New York-based painter-printmaker, creates drawings, paintings and prints depicting serene scenes of forests before sunrise — or maybe it's just after sundown — where cloud-covered moons shine the reflections of trees on blankets of snow. The effect is peaceful and majestic, as forests should be.

"Dancing in the Moonlight: Nocturnes by Charles Yoder" will be at the Mattatuck Museum, 144 W. Main St. in Waterbury, until March 2.

Working with a very limited palette — white, black, gray, various shades of blue, some green and some brown — Yoder makes depictions of woodland nighttime that at times are almost photorealistic. Yoder focuses directly on the snow, with leafless bush branches popping through the surface, or upwards through the leafy trees toward the full or crescent moon. He uses a variety of media: mostly oil and acrylic on canvas, but also works on paper in gouache, conte, watercolor, charcoal and India ink. The exhibit also includes one woodcut.

Four examples of Yoder's "Goth" series are in the show, small-scale oils on canvas of various visions of the moon. All are surrounded by almost oppressively ornate black frames, to enhance the sense of enveloping nighttime.

The other works, larger in scale, are horizontal, emphasizing the tranquility of the broad night scene, or vertical, accentuating the awesome sight of a twilight sky full of dramatic cloud formations. In either case, visitors to the exhibit may want to immediately leave and take a walk in the woods. Information: http://www.mattatuckmuseum.org.